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Apple Confidential

Important Dates in Early Apple Computer History

While it is nearly impossible to take all the influence that Apple computers have had on our culture and the modern world we live in and whittle it down to a few snippets, nonetheless there are some extremely important dates that anyone who is a fan of the company’s history will need to know if they want to be familiar with the story. One can view more on any given website regarding Apple history, but here’s the basics.

April 1, 1976 – Apple computers was founded by Ron Wayne, Steve Jobs, and Steve “The Woz” Wozniak. Wayne would later sell his shares of the company back to Jobs and Woz before Apple would officially incorporate.

July 1976 – The Apple I, invented by Wozniak, was released to the public. Originally Woz had to hand-make each computer, and the retail selling price was just short of $700, quite a price for the mid-seventies. Nonetheless orders kept coming in.

January 3, 1977 – Apple incorporates with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak running the company. Funding was provided by multi-millionaire Mike Markkula, who would help with the actual business growth and setup.

July 1977 – The drastically improved and new Apple II was released, capturing attention because it offered both open architecture for programming and cell based color graphics – things none of the competition had managed to provide up to that point.

April 1980 – Apple went public with an IPO, originally trading at only $10 a share.

January 1984 – Apple would bring Jobs’s Macintosh public. Later shortened to Mac, this would become the base setup by which all future advancements would be made.

1985 – After an argument with the board Steve Jobs was ousted from his own company. While Apple would do okay without him at first, the company would hit major roadblocks going into the 1990s, at one point grossly failing and giving up most of their market share.